The LORD Said to My Lord

For days, the experts have been firing tricky questions at Jesus, trying to catch him out. Now Jesus turns around and asks them one. And the temple courts go completely quiet.

It is the last week of Jesus' life, a few days before the Passover. Jerusalem is crowded with pilgrims. Jesus has ridden into the city to shouts of Hosanna to the son of David, and he has been teaching every day in the temple courts. Religious leaders have come at him one after another with traps. Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Whose wife will a woman be in the resurrection? Which is the greatest commandment? Jesus has answered every one, wisely and simply. Now a group of Pharisees, experts in God's law, are gathered together. And Jesus takes his turn to ask a question.

“What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” The Christ means the Messiah, the anointed king that God had promised. The Pharisees answer straight away, because every child knows it. “The son of David.” They are right. God had promised David that a king from his family would reign for ever. Prophets had spoken of a Branch from David's line. People called Jesus himself son of David as he healed the blind and rode into Jerusalem. The Messiah would be David's descendant. Easy question. You can imagine some of them smiling, glad to be asked something so simple after all the arguments of the week. But Jesus has another one, and this one is not simple at all.

“How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool?” Jesus is quoting Psalm one hundred and ten, a psalm of David that everyone knew. In it David speaks of two Lords. The first is God. The second is someone David calls my Lord, whom God invites to sit at his right hand, the place of highest honour and power, until every enemy is defeated. Jesus presses the point. “If David then calls him Lord, how is he his son?”

In those days a father would never call his own son or grandson my lord. It was always the other way around. The younger honoured the elder. So how could King David, the greatest king Israel ever had, call his own descendant Lord? Unless that descendant was greater than David himself. The Pharisees think. They look at each other. And Matthew says no one was able to answer him a word. And from that day, no one dared ask him any more questions. The puzzle hangs in the air. The Messiah is David's son. And he is David's Lord.

Psalm one hundred and ten was very important to the first Christians. It is quoted or echoed in the New Testament more often than any other psalm: by Peter at Pentecost, by Paul in his letters, and again and again in the Letter to the Hebrews, which also takes up its words about a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek. Scholars have counted over thirty quotations and allusions.

The Lord said to my Lord. You can read it in Psalm one hundred and ten and in Matthew chapter twenty-two, verses forty-one to forty-six. Jesus left the question unanswered that day. At Christmas, Christians give their answer: the baby born in David's town of Bethlehem is the son of David by birth, and also the Lord whom David worshipped. So here is a question to carry with you. Jesus asked: whose son is the Messiah? Who do you say Jesus is?